Philip Keeney
Philip Olin Keeney (1891–1962), and his wife, Mary Jane Keeney, were librarians who became part of the Silvermaster spy ring in the 1940s.The Librarian Spies: Philip and Mary Jane Keeney and Cold War Espionage, Greenwood Publishing Group. Keeney met Mary Jane when both were working as librarians at the University of Michigan in 1929. In 1931, he became head librarian at Montana State University (now known as the University of Montana) at Missoula. By the mid-1930s, both Keeney and his wife were involved with left-wing political movements; in 1937, Keeney was fired due to his radical activities. Progressive Librarians Council The Keeneys moved to Berkeley, California, where they became members of the Marin County CPUSA Club, according to Mary Jane's diaries. In 1939, the Keeneys founded the Progressive Librarians' Council (PLC). That year, the PLC endorsed for Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish, chairman in 1937 of the first open meeting of the Second Congress of the League of American Writers, which was “founded under Communist auspices in 1935,” according to a 1942 report by President Roosevelt's Attorney General Francis Biddle.During the Nazi-Soviet pact, said Biddle, the League “began openly to follow the Communist Party line as dictated by the foreign policy of the Soviet Union.” The League's sudden pacifism during the pact, and equally sudden reversion to pro-war militancy upon its breakdown, observed Biddle, left “little doubt of its Communist control.” cited in As he was not a librarian, the American Library Association (ALA) opposed MacLeish's candidacy, but when FDR made his appointment, the PLC candidate got the nod.In 1948, following the death of Soviet agent Laurence Duggan—ten days after Duggan implicated Henry Collins and Frederick Vanderbilt Field in espionage, and five days after Alger Hiss's indictment by a grand jury (Christopher D. O'Sullivan, "8. Resignation," Sumner Welles, Postwar Planning, and the Quest for a New World Order, 1937-1943 University Press, 2007 ISBN 023114258)—MacLeish would dedicate a poem to Duggan, denouncing "informers" for their "slanders" and "lies." (Archibald MacLeish, "The Black Day," Collected Poems, 1917-1982 Mifflin Harcourt, 1985 ISBN 0-395-39569-0, p. 403) His apparent targets were Hede Massing and Whittaker Chambers, each of whom had identified Duggan. Adolf Berle’s Notes on his Meeting with Whittaker Chambers (John Earl Haynes, Historical Writings); The PLC also smuggled money to Emilio Andrés, commissar of an army corps of the Soviet-backed Spanish Republican Army, Wingeate claims that Andrés was killed during World War II, but McReynolds claims that “Following World War II, Keeney's wife Mary Jane... met wife... who... died shortly after this meeting. The Keeney's, along with other members of the PLC, continued to send money and clothing to Emilio...” in exile in France after the Spanish Civil War. During the Hitler-Stalin pact, the PLC sent a letter to FDR urging him not to aid Poland, France or the United Kingdom, all fighting for their lives under the Nazi onslaught. (The letter had been phrased in such a way that it appeared to be from the ALA, but that group sent the President its own missive clarifying that the PLC did not speak for the ALA.) Once the pact broke down, and Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the PLC altered its position, advocating American participation in the war. Allegations: Communist fronts and Soviet espionage The Keeneys had a long list of political affiliations with alleged "Communist fronts" such as the Washington Book Shop, identified in 1944 by BiddleThen known as the "Washington Cooperative Bookshop": See Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations. and in 1948 by Truman administration Attorney General Tom ClarkThen known as the "Washington Bookshop Association": See Attorney General's list, Federal Register 13 (20 March 1948), Department of History, University of Minnesota. as a subversive organization. In 1940, “Keeney and his wife were signed on apparently by the Neighbors,”—code name for Soviet military intelligence (GRU)—according to a 1944 report by NKVD agent Sergey Kurnikov. Government work Despite Keeney's radical political views, activities in several “popular front” groups and socialization with numerous people involved in Soviet espionage activities, both he and his wife were able to obtain a variety of federal jobs between 1940 and 1947. Within months of the PLC's endorsement of MacLeish for Librarian of Congress, Keeney was working at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., where he handled classified material. NKVD agent Jacob Golos allegedly met with him there. After the United States became involved in World War II, Keeney transferred to the Office of the Coordinator of Information, which was later transferred to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), precursor of the CIA. In a 1942 Venona cable discussing infiltration of OSS, “Maksim” (Rezident Vasily Zarubin, under cover as “Vasily Zubilin”) in New York wrote to “Victor” (General Pavel Fitin, head of NKVD foreign intelligence) in Moscow, “KINI is being entrusted to our agentura,”KGB 726-729 New York to Moscow 22 May 1942, p. 5 (National Security Agency) meaning that recruitment was being undertaken. A note from U.S. cryptographers states “KINI: If correct, probably Philip Olin KEENEY.”KGB 726-729 New York to Moscow 22 May 1942, p. 7 (National Security Agency) From 1943 to 1945, Keeney was Chief of the Document Security Section in the Foreign Economic Administration. His wife, meanwhile, worked in the Bureau of Economic Warfare. In 1945, Keeney was allegedly transferred from the GRU to the NKVD. That year, he went to Tokyo as libraries officer of the Supreme Command of the Allied Powers in occupied Japan, while his wife worked in France for the Allied Staff on Reparations. Both Keeneys had numerous contacts with Russian agents and sought to provide them with information, exerting “considerable effort” seeking to “contribute something of value to the Soviet cause in which they believed..." Investigations In 1946, the State Department prepared a Top Secret chart identifying 124 loyalty or security cases on the department payroll. Later that year, State Department official Samuel Klaus prepared a 106-page confidential memo summarizing security data on each of the cases listed on the chart. One of these was Mary Jane Keeney. A 1946 congressional report named Keeney's wife, and in 1947 both lost their federal jobs and were denied passports. Within three months, Keeney attempted to leave the country without a valid passport, on the same Polish ship on which Comintern agent Gerhardt Eisler had escaped to the East bloc; the lawyer who encouraged him in this unsuccessful attempt to leave the country was Eisler's attorney. During the Judith Coplon spy trial that year, FBI surveillance records were published that implicated Keeney's wife as a courier for the Communist Party, observed upon her return from France in 1946 delivering a manila envelope to Bernstein, which he in turn delivered to Alexander Trachtenberg. Mary Jane herself admitted associating with Nathan Gregory Silvermaster and William Ludwig Ullmann. In 1949, Keeney was a sponsor of the National Conference on American Policy in China and the Far East and the Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace, both arranged by the National Council of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions, cited as subversive by the California Committee on Un-American Activities. Despite all this, by the following year, Mary Jane was working in the Document Control Section of the United Nations secretariat. After Sen. Joseph McCarthy publicized this in his 1950 speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, she was dismissed. The Keeneys refused to answer questions regarding membership in the Communist Party. In 1952, they were convicted on contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions before a Senate committee, though their convictions were later reversed on appeal. Later life In their later years, the Keeneys are variously reported to have founded and run a cinema club in Washington, D.C. between 1952 and 1958, showing art films, and reportedly opened a beatnik theatre in Greenwich Village called Club Cinema to air mostly foreign-language films with subtitles, with occasional folksingers or poetry readings. Keeney died in 1962 at the age of 71. He was survived by his wife. Venona After the National Security Agency declassified the Venona project in 1995, John Earl Haynes, Cold War historian in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, identified Philip Keeney with the code name "Bredan." References Sources * John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, Yale University Press (1999) * Rosalee McReynolds, The Progressive Librarians Council and Its Founders http://www.libr.org/pl/2_McReynolds.html External links *[http://www.libr.org/PL/2_McReynolds.html Rosalee McReynolds, The Progressive Librarians Council and Its Founders] Category:1891 births Category:1962 deaths Category:American spies for the Soviet Union Category:American people in the Venona papers Category:People of the Office of Strategic Services